New HDRI Tools From Greyscalegorilla

It’s a big day for HDRI, Image Based Lighting, and Cinema 4D. Greyscalegorilla just released an update and a brand new collection of HDRIs that allow you dozens of ways (over 140, actually) to light your animation or render in Cinema 4D. Great lighting can easily be overlooked in 3D, but I hope these tools make it easier for you to make great looking renders. I hope you have a few minutes to watch and read about what’s new and to see if it’s a good fit in your workflow.

HDRI Studio Pack Update

HDRI and Global Illumination have been a huge part of my lighting toolset over the last few years. If you have followed along with some of the latest tutorials, you may have seen my HDRI Rig being used all the time. It comes with the HDRI Studio pack and it’s been my number one lighting tool of choice lately. Well, I just updated the HDRI Rig in the latest HDRI Studio pack with some really cool new features that we have been wanting to add to make it even easier to make great renders.

Helpful new features like a preview mode, reflective floor and an instant fill slider allow you to tweak and adjust your lighting and background just right for that perfect render. You can see all these features in action in the demo video below. Of course, all of these things are included in the latest update to the HDRI Studio pack.

HDRI Studio Demo Video

New HDRI Collections: Pro Studios

I am also announcing a brand new HDRI Collection called “Pro Studios” that features over 70 MORE HDRIs that can be used with the HDRI Studio Pack mentioned above. Think of it as an add-on pack that gives you even more lighting options to choose from when lighting your scene.

These HDRs were captured and developed by real lighting artists that work professionally in 3D lighting and compositing. They have a TON of detail and work really well in creating different types of looks in your scene. I made a short video below that shows off some of these studios.

You must have HDRI Studio to use the new Collections. It’s $69 for the new Collection, and I have been using it in many of my recent renders that you have seen on the site. Visit the new page for more details.

HDRI Collections Demo Video

Get Them All With A New Bundle

Finally, the HDRI Bundle. You can get both the updated HDRI Studio Pack and the new HDRI Collections: Pro Studios for only $119. This is $20 less than the price will be tomorrow. Get both of our HDRI Tools for one price and get over 140 different custom lighting studios to add reflections and light to your scene. Visit the Bundle Page for more details.

Thank You

Thanks for taking time to check out all these new tools. Image based lighting has become our number one way to light recently and I hope these new tools find their way into your creative toolset. Thanks again for checking this all out.

Note To Current Customers Of The HDRI Studio Pack

Current customers should have received an email with a free link to the latest update. Please contact Support if you haven’t received it yet. Don’t forget to include the email you used to purchase the HDRI Studio Pack.

Hey Nick,
I just bought the Everything C4D Bundle on Saturday and I don’t think the HDRI Collections: Pro Studios was included in my downloads. Is it suppose to be, or is there and upgrade charge for that? Just checking, if I need to buy it separately, I’d like to get it while the discount is still on. Also, can you confirm that the link I received with the bundle included the latest update to the HDRI Studio Pack as well. Thanks for all of your incredible work.

Thanks for getting the Everything C4D bundle. That bundle will include all the tools, but it will not be updated to include the new Collections Series. You will have to get that separate. However, It should have included the latest HDRI Studio pack.

There is no perfect rule. Light Kit allows you to build your own light studio. HDRI Studio Pack allows you to use pre-made lighting scenes. For professional lighters, Light Kit pro is more flexible, but for most artists that just want it to look good, HDRI Studio and the new Collection pack make it super easy to try out different looks quickly.

Great pack. I originally got the lighting bundle, and mostly just used the lighting pack. But I decided to get this update anyway, and fool around with HDRI some more, and have to say I really like it! As you stated above I can really see the advantage to having both in your tool arsenal. Thanks for making this wonderful pack.

For “Outdoor” Starters – this site could be useful:http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/index.html
And the best of all: the plugin and the HDRI-maps are completely free and the HiRes-Maps can also be used in the HDRStudioRig-Slot!!

great work as always. I use the HDRI Kit every single day and there’s tremendous value for me.
The new Studio setups are top notch, and the update to the kit are great, especially the preview is much appreciated. Keep up the good work.

The only (small) disadvantage of image based lighting = despite the high resolution HDRI’s (6.000×3.000 I believe) I sometimes get a jagged edge in my reflections at the border of a (hard) light. Anti alias doesn’t solve it, because it’s the bitmap that’s reflecting with close up shots/camera movement. It only occurs with the hard edged lights in de HDRI bitmaps and it can be solved with a tiny bit of ‘blurred reflections’, but that’s a huge render hit when rendering hundreds of frames in HD.

Hi Guido,
not sure, if it does the trick for you, but I use a tiny bit of blurring on the actual HDRI texture (the one you can set below the interpolation option in material manager) instead of blurry reflections in such situations. The hit on render times is way lower than with blurry reflections. But it surely depends on the situation, if it serves your needs…
Regards,
Andreas

These new controls and sliders look pretty sweet. I especially like the built in seamless floor and the new view of the HDR sphere as you spin it around.

I don’t know if you guys have thought about this much, but my guess is that the next step for this pack is to capture (or hire someone to capture) some real images of indoor studios and various light setups and include those in the HDRI pack.

When you’re lighting a lot of these models, like the watch, there’s no way you’d know if the HDR environment was real or CG since the reflections are so blurred and abstract — but with the chrome ball for instance, you immediately see that the environment is CG, and that’s not always the desired look.

It isn’t actually that difficult to capture real HDRIs — you just need a sigma 8 or 4.5 depending on what flavor of Canon camera you have, a nodal ninja head, and PTGUI pro. They you stitch ’em together and bam! Realistic HDRI. Just thought that might be a fun project for you guys in the future and it’d improve the quality of the product and options quite a bit.

Same question I think: Seamless floor is integrated into the overall Studio now, but if you don’t want a seamless floor or background – is there anyway of turning this off without twirling open the null and killing the floor and background object? I can uncheck floor, but not the background. I use the Studio without seamless floor most of the time, so having to do a manual clear out each time I drop the rig in is actual a step in the wrong direction. Any way to have a toggle for seamless floor/background combo off completely? Would be nice as an option.
Totally loving the preview orb – no more checking ‘seen by camera’ and spinning around in the viewport to set the rotation angle. Nice addition! Thanks Nick and team.

Thanks for your replay
Why ATI? After a lots of web search and when it comes to high end graphic cards ATI and Nvidia are very tight it’s only a matter on who you are comfortable with. In my case it’s ATI (AMD).

Hi Nick!
We hpe your fine and good!
We want to ask you… we have your light pack collection (light ki pro 1.5, HDRI 1 and 2 and Texture Pro)… We have a wonderful experience with the Physical render in C4d. But we re pushing a little harder with my partners at the studio, and with a lot of effort we bought the Vray render for C4d. Cause we want a little more control and quality in the Renders (when needed).

Now we are not so sure if we could use in Vray Render:
light kit pro (we are not so sure)?
HDRI packs (we are not so sure)?
Textures Kit Pro (we think we dont)?

If so could you please give us a tutorial or tips? Cause it woul be a shame if we could not use all this magnificent Packs you know…

Theres not to much information about Vray as well and we are not so sure if you are using it too.
But we love all your Tuts and we think it would be awesome to learn Vray software (tips) with you as the “The Big Sensei” as usual!